September 6, 2010

GET INVOLVED

Posts on fiscal wake-up tour

Subscribe to this feed Subscribe to this feed

 

Deficit Hawks Swoop Down on Washington
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 - 11:46 AM

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress got a lot of good advice recently when representatives of The Concord Coalition’s fiscal advisory councils visited Capitol Hill to present their recommendations.

The basic message: Elected officials must make some dramatic changes to put the country on a more responsible fiscal course, protect our economic future and avoid saddling our children and grandchildren with massive debt.

Advisory council members from across the country -- Atlanta, Iowa, Milwaukee, Northern California and Philadelphia -- met with members of Congress and their staffs as part of The Concord Coalition’s National Conference of Fiscal Stewardship this month in Washington. The Fiscal Advisory Council of Northern Virginia had already met with several members of Congress in the fall. Representatives from the University of Denver, where the Fiscal Stewardship Project featured a special student engagement initiative this year, also attended the conference and met with elected officials.

In the conference’s opening...

... Read More

Recent Fiscal Future Commission Developments
Monday, November 16, 2009 - 12:29 PM

For the last few weeks, members of Congress have been increasingly pushing for a bipartisan commission to tackle the nation's fiscal challenges. The impetus has been the need to raise the debt limit as the national debt rapidly approaches the $12 trillion statutory ceiling. Because legislation to raise the debt limit is must-pass, lawmakers are trying to tie commission creation to the legislative language. Senator Evan Bayh highlighted this issue in a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid, which was co-signed by nine additional senators. The Blue Dog coalition of Democrats in the House also recently announced their support for a commission.

Last week, Budget Committee Chairman Senator Kent Conrad held...

... Read More

"Waking-Up" a Mile High
Monday, October 26, 2009 - 4:40 PM

The Concord Coalition’s Fiscal Wake-Up Tour made its second stop in Denver on Thursday, drawing around 700 people of all ages for a day-long collection of events. 

The message of fiscal responsibility found receptive audiences as college students and others heard experts discuss the country's long-term fiscal problems and some possible solutions. The sense of concern in the audience was palpable, as was the frustration with government officials who have failed to take effective action.

Early in the day, nearly 300 Colorado college students participated in “Paying for America,” a student summit held at the the Cable Center on the University of Denver campus. (You can watch the summit panels here.)

They heard from a collection of budget experts, student activists, and filmmakers including: ...

... Read More

An alarm clock for Maine

Friday, August 28, 2009 - 9:52 AM

Perhaps even more than most of Concord’s Fiscal Wake-Up Tour programs, the one in Maine this week underscored the need for a really big alarm clock.

The recession has sliced into the government's revenue while putting its spending on steroids. Concord Executive Director Robert L. Bixby offered the Wake-Up Tour audience of more than 200 in Kennebunkport a troubling factoid: last month’s federal deficit of $180 billion was larger than the deficit for all of 2007.

And on the same day, the Obama administration released a grim projection of $9 trillion in deficits over the next decade, $2 trillion higher than its previous estimate. When this was reported in Kennebunkport, fretful murmurs swept through the room. 

Even the $9 trillion figure is probably too optimistic, according to Concord’s analysis. So to borrow an analogy from David M. Walker, president and CEO of The Peter G. Peterson Foundation: Watch out for the "tsunami" that’s on the way.

Then there’s the current status of the health care debate: High interest in new government services and assistance, considerably less enthusiasm for proposals to pay for them. And not all that...

... Read More

Not just "doom and gloom"
Friday, August 28, 2009 - 9:50 AM

Speakers in the Fiscal Wake-Up Tour sometimes worry that all the bad news they are delivering may be leave audiences too discouraged about the country’s future. Too much gloom and doom, after all, could cause some people to simply throw up their hands in despair.

But while people who attended this week’s Wake-Up program in Kennebunkport, Maine, found the presentations sobering, they also seemed engaged and in many cases energized to seek solutions.

That was reflected both in the wide-ranging questions during the program and in comments from some audience members afterwards.

“The program was very informative; it’s great that we can do this,” said Jonathan T.E. Courtney, assistant Republican leader in the Maine Senate. He strongly agreed with the calls for Democrats and Republicans to cooperate in finding solutions to the nation’s fiscal problems: “We just can’t sustain this level of spending.”

Such cooperation in Maine, he said, enabled legislators there to begin to deal constructively with difficulties in the state budget this year: “We decided to engage Democrats rather than throw bombs.”

Frank Gallagher, a Portland Democrat and Maine director for Americans United for Change, also liked the program and agreed with much of what he heard there. Rising federal deficits, he said, were a critical...

... Read More